All the places you can’t go, all the things that you can't do

Me: Wind and electricity don’t go well together
DH: Electricity doesn’t go well with much of anything.

Ten hours with no power makes for a pretty boring day/afternoon/night. After a better-than-last-week morning with the 4th graders, my darling husband and I put together an ambitious list of “to-do” for the afternoon. Beginning with a lunch date and, ending abruptly, with a lunch date. Dorothy and her house were nowhere in sight but the wind vs. trees vs. electricity was interesting. After making our way through traffic, where the concept of a 4-way stop at dark traffic lights is apparently a silly rumor [damn evangelical Republicans!] we rented a movie [okay dumb] and went home. We got through about the first horrible 45 minutes of Baby Mamma and then NOTHING. It was officially an adventure.

I remember in second grade we lost power and our teacher brought us to the back of the classroom, near the sink and the emergency light, where we played telephone for hours. Not just regular telephone – flashlight telephone. The person who was telling the secret got to hold the flashlight. We were so sad when the lights came back on.

When I was little, my mom would make power outages an adventure too. We’d all scurry around the house gathering up candles. My brothers and I would make a blanket fort and we’d hide out until the power came back on.

Last night we were bored out of our minds. Apparently power outages are way more fun when you still pee your pants. Everything we tried to think of…required power. Surf the net – power. Read a book – power. Vacuum – power. microwave popcorn - obviously. Showers and grilling do not require power. While I fumbled in the dark with the shampoo, husband grilled up some chicken and a can of baked beans. We plugged our can opener into a battery back-up to open it [note: for emergencies buy manual can opener] and cooked our beans in a cake pan on the grill. Camp style! So dinner was over, sun was down, and again we had nothing to do. My mom called from their Puerto Rican vacation and offered up the following advice, “Well guess you’ll just have to have some sex!” [creepy, but it’s my mom] And, although my husband is amazing in bed [holla!] his skills alone cannot fill the void in a 600 minute power outage. So, needless to say we had 530 minutes left with nothing to do.

Me: If I lived alone I would be SUPER creeped out right now.
DH: Really? What would you do?
Me: Probably get in the car and keep driving around until one of my friends let me come over.

[later, 9:30pm]
Cell Phone: ring!ring!
Me: Hello?
Heidi: I’m scared at home so I’m driving around in my car.
Me: What!? Come over!
Heidi: I thought you guys might be in bed.
Me: We are, there’s nothing else to do. Seriously, it’s fine, come over!

Me: Heidi is scared. She’s sleeping here tonight.
DH: Wouldn’t she want to go somewhere with power?
Me: Nope, just people.
DH: We only have one flashlight and I called it.

[note: for emergencies buy another flashlight]
[note: for emergencies buy unscented, utility candles or your entire house will smell like the Yankee candle store and you will want to throw up.]